Cronyism is a weeping sore in Australian government

By Jack Waterford

15 September 2018 — 12:00am

If Scott Morrison has a moment between homilies, and Bill Shorten from his looking at himself in the mirror, they might do well to look at some of the campaign themes of the 1996 election, when John Howard decisively beat Paul Keating. Alas for Morrison (who was not yet on the party payroll in 1996), the themes and slogans that helped Howard then could this time be working for the Labor Party.

John Howard campaigned under two slogans. One was “Enough is enough” – reflecting a popular view that the Hawke-Keating government, after 13 years, had run out of energy, puff and inspiration, and that it was time to send them out for a spell. It did not particularly hint that a catalogue of scandal, disunity, dysfunction and internal bitterness, as well as having eyes off the ball, had finally exasperated the electorate’s patience. In Labor’s hands it could this time, not least after the Muppet shows of recent weeks, the Barnaby Joyce circus, and debacles over ever-diminishing policy, not least over energy.

The other slogan was “For all of us”. It reflected an argument, long polished by Howard in his statements, that the Keating government had lost touch with the electorate, and was providing government for insiders, by insiders.

John Howard won the 1996 election on slogans such as "Enough is enough" and "For all of us"Credit:Kylie Melinda Smith

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Keating had become increasingly arrogant and remote, even from his ministers and the public administration. He was giving fabulous and inspiring speeches, perhaps cementing his place in history. But he was not listening to objective advice, getting about in circles where he could test his judgments, or determine whether his transmissions were being received. He seemed impatient with the tedium of advocacy, argument and debate on routine matters of government.

And when Keating consulted, he dealt with established lobbies, mostly full of Labor luvvies, who had, Howard believed, captured most of society’s institutions –on the economy, on industrial relations, in foreign affairs, in multicultural and Aboriginal affairs, and, importantly in cultural and broadcasting institutions. This Howard perception of hostile institutions made him the culture warrior he became.

Labor, Howard was saying, was no longer thinking of the population at large, or of its fundamental constituencies. It was rather rewarding its pals and cronies - often giving a veneer of non-partisanship by acting at a distance. Keating was dealing with big business and big unions, selected groups of people in the arts, the environmental movement, Aboriginal affairs, the ABC and elsewhere – all with titles and pedigrees tending to suggest that they were entirely representative, rather than people singing for their supper.

The “For all of us” slogan was promising that Howard would govern for everyone, rather than for mates, cronies and people of the Labor worldview. And that he would do so directly, rather than through agencies long compromised by Labor appointments and influence, or voluntary bodies intrinsically hostile to Howard’s world view, subsidised and kept in line by lots of federal government cash.

The information, true or false, that is presently doing most damage to Peter Dutton is helping to kill off any remaining prospects that the Morrison government has of being able to survive the public’s disgust at its long-time obsession with party quarrels, personality disputes, and contests between reactionaries and fairly conservative “moderates”.

One does not have to have an opinion about the truth of what Roman Quaedvlieg has alleged of favours for old friends or influential people done by Dutton. What sticks in the public mind – beyond any capacity of Dutton to redeem himself or the government – is the image of favours being dispensed with alacrity to mates, to mates of mates, and to friends of the party or the faction.

It’s not even that the decisions made are particularly objectionable. It’s the access, the privileged insiderness, by a mere phone call or email, of getting of an almost immediate hearing while ordinary members of the public would have had to wait, often for months, even to have a representation acknowledged.

Dutton is a political warrior with a tough skin and is almost impervious to insult. No doubt his ego has taken a double blow both from his failure to command the support of a majority of his party room when he decided to put a knife in the back of his prime minister, and, later, when it was shown how amateur and complacent the organisation of the attempted coup had been.

But one can take it that he has no intention of voluntarily stepping down, least of all when he has closely examined his conscience over his visa-granting actions and found himself entirely innocent. Nor to stand aside while the High Court considers if he is disqualified from holding office for being in a commercial arrangement with government by virtue of the millions received by a family-owned child-care operation. It will be hard enough to hold his seat at a general election; virtually impossible at a byelection.

In certain respects, Morrison can scarce afford to lose him, given that the coalition now (after the resignation of Malcolm Turnbull) lacks a majority in the House of Representatives.

But Dutton is a major political drag. His troubles are taking Morrison’s oxygen - and affecting the reputation of government in general. Morrison simply doesn’t have the political time to be losing weeks in debilitating arguments that, one way or another, help remind the public of internal dissension in the party, and the messiness and oddness of Morrison’s own ascension.

Dutton has been for too long the callous bastard in modern Liberal politics to deserve or ask for much quarter, even though many will remember that his reputation as a hard man came largely by carrying on with policies and cruelties pioneered by Scott Morrison himself. He gets little sympathy from me. Yet even I can concede that when it comes to being a minister for mates, cronies and the big end of town, Dutton would not be in the top 24 in the ministry.

Like the Turnbull government before it, and the Abbott government before that, the Coalition to which voters turned, after profound weariness and disillusion with Labor was almost from the start concerned with looking after its friends, particularly those at the big end of town, and punishing anyone seen as being a running dog of Labor.

Morrison (and Cormann) were as involved in the politically disastrous strategy of putting corporate tax cuts ahead of income tax cuts.

How can one forget the Herculean efforts, from day one of the Abbott government, of Mathias Cormann to water down legislation intended to avoid conflict of interest in the provision of financial advice? It was this – done consciously to advantage big banks and insurance companies - which helped lay the ground for the regular reports from the Hayne Royal Commission about fraud, corruption and theft by some of the major institutions of the land.

Which government defanged the regulators? Which governments resisted, at least until it faced a revolt from within own ranks, the idea of any inquiry into the actions of banks and their super funds and insurance arms. The big three ministerial regulators of the economy, and the small fry, such as Kelly O’Dwyer insisted that there were no problems, and that, if there were, the “tough cops on the block” would catch them. Ministers have now mostly apologised for their resistance to the idea of a royal commission; but not for being the ones who made possible what happened.

Turnbull, with his merchant banking background and aristocratic mien, may have typified the image of government acting for the benefit of the big end of town. But Morrison (and Cormann) were as involved in the politically disastrous strategy of putting corporate tax cuts ahead of income tax cuts, and of extending it to big business.

It hardly needs to be added that there are lobbies and beneficiaries of policies promoting coal and the dragging feet on action against climate change, who have benefited big-time from these ministers. That Morrison’s new chief of staff was a senior man in the Minerals Council, the country's main coal lobby group, for 6.5 years, speaks volumes of the government’s closeness to the interests of big business, and of its unconcern for appearances. As with when the new Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg (perhaps at the instance of Turnbull – this is not clear yet) was pushing hundreds of millions of dollars into a foundation more or less operated as a club to get business brownie points for seeming to be concerned about the Great Barrier Reef.

Ministers may make decisions believing them to be in the broad public interest, even if they incidentally benefit their friends, their backers and the urgers and cronies constantly at their doors. A decision is not wrong merely because it suits the interests of a supporter. But if the process were as pure and transparent as many would have you believe, it would not be as necessary for there to be such an enormous, and such an opaque, lobbying industry, almost entirely unaccountable to public scrutiny. And one might not see such a constant and easy interchange by which major lobbies get people “embedded” in ministerial offices, and ministers and politicians, after their time at the helm, get cushy jobs working for just the sort of people – indeed often just the people – with whom they have been dealing. Influence-mongering is increasingly behind the scenes. But they have never seemed more powerful and insouciant.

Even when no actual corruption is involved, there has often been corruption of due process, transparency and what some might have called a fair go. It is no surprise that government has no enthusiasm for open and transparent anti-corruption bodies, and that a police force, generously rewarded annually for its inertia and passivity when it comes to misconduct in government, allows itself to be a part of the resistance to such accountability.

This week I was at the ANU, “in conversation” with Professor Quentin Beresford, with his new book Adani and the War on Coal. The book suggests that the power of the coal lobbies, and its sinister and malign influence over the Commonwealth and Queensland governments of either stripe, ended up being frustrated by a virtual popular uprising, in which more than 1 million Australians made clear their opposition to this risk to the reef, and polluter whose profit projections, at best, depend entirely on public subsidy. During this week, however, Adani slightly changed its plans, and is again aggressively lining up our public officials for concessions, subsidies, discretions, and a blind eye to risk.

The book explains the rise of Gautam Adani as a baron of fossil fuel in India, operating particularly under the patronage of Narendra Modi, to their mutual benefit, originally when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state, now Prime Minister of India.

In India the interface between business and politics is so strong that hardly anything raises eyebrows. The system of crony capitalism, special deals, fixed markets, and political parties (even of the left) virtually owned by big business is corrupted, but sort of works. India is not well regarded by Transparency International.

As the book progresses, however, it becomes obvious that the governance and accountability arrangements in Queensland (or at federal government level in Canberra) are not much better, if at all, than India. That might get a nod from anyone remembering Bjelke-Petersen, and the corruption exposed by the Fitzgerald Royal Commission. But the system continues, and regardless of the parties in power. And crony capitalism, and government by mates, for the mates, and damn the public is as prevalent in Labor or Liberal NSW, and in the Labor ACT.

More and more of the public are uneasily aware of how they are being ripped off by such deals. By comparison, the capacity to get Dutton on your case is very small beer.

Yet the blatancy of it, and the appearance of it is probably more damaging because anyone (at least anyone other than Dutton) can understand that one does not play favourites when one is exercising public power.